Chapter A–2 (Figure 66)

Figure 66. The components of meltwater runoff from glaciers. Observational results for winter mass balance were used to calculate the steady-state runoff for 40 glaciers worldwide during the period 1961–2003, steady-state runoff increased by one-third to account for accumulation in four summer months to approximate the annual value. These annual values of mass gain were multiplied by the glacier area of 785,000 km2 to obtain the annual rate of flux of total freshwater volume from glaciers to the world ocean, excluding flux from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (steady-state components in this figure). Runoff from storage is (equal to) glacier mass balance.